At Risk Youth

Teenagers who are just entering puberty often experience sleep disorders, such as trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, being overtired in the daytime. Now a new study from University Nijmegen finds a link between early puberty, sleep problems and alcohol abuse. Some teenagers may be using alcohol in order to fall asleep.

Professor Carmen Van der Zwaluw studied 430 children ages 11 to 14 years old, and found that entering puberty was related to sleep problems and later bedtimes, which in turn correlate with experiments with alcohol.

The study appeared in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

A mother’s lifestyle and methods of parenting her children are factors in whether they are likely to drink alcohol as young teenagers, according to a new study from the University of Queensland.

Dr. Rosa Alti and her colleagues studied 4158 mothers and children and found that if a mother exerted a low-level of parental control when her child was under age 5 years old, and if the mother had more two or more partners before her child was 14 years old, the child was more likely to drink alcohol. The risk for problem drinking at age 14 years old was twice as high in children of mothers that had both factors.

The study appeared in the journal Addiction.

Researchers in Finland set out to identify which socioeconomic, family, personal and lifestyle risk factors in the teenage years predict adult alcoholism. They surveyed more than 1,400 16-year-olds, and then followed up with more surveys when the participants were 32 years old.

• Among the boys, the strongest predictors of excessive alcohol use in adulthood included parental divorce, depression, leisure time spent daily among friends, and drunkenness-orientated behavior.
• Among girls, the adolescent predictors of excessive alcohol use in adulthood were drunkenness-orientated drinking and frequent smoking.
• Other factors that predicted excessive use of alcohol in adulthood, were parental social class, school performance, low self-esteem, impulsiveness, poor relationships with parents, poor parental trust, health behavior, dating, and problems with the law.

Writing in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, the Helsinki team reported, “early interventions for adolescent substance use and a set of specific psychosocial risk factors should be tailored and evaluated as methods for identifying those at high risk of and preventing excessive alcohol use in adulthood.”

In addition to predicting later-life difficulties, adolescent and teen alcohol abuse can also cause myriad problems in the present, including poor academic performance, health concerns and strained relations with peers and family members.

A community group in Redlands, Calif., is shifting its approach to underage drinking. Rather than informing young people about the dangers of drinking, the group is educating adults on the consequences of providing young people with alcohol.

“The RPC [Redlands Prevention Coalition] is working to create a ’social host’ ordinance in Redlands,” the Redlands Daily Facts newspaper reported. “The law could empower police to cite hosts of underage drinking parties with civil or criminal violations. Police could also levy fines for the cost of law enforcement services needed to enforce the ordinance against hosts who do not comply with the law.”

Other cities in the area have adopted similar laws and seen them work. The RPC is currently drafting legislation that it hopes to put in front of lawmakers soon.

UCLA researchers have discovered that children whose mothers abuse alcohol during pregnancy can benefit from an innovative effort to teach them how to read and interpret social cues.

According to a Nov. 19 article by Michael Smith of MedPage Today, the social skills training proved appeared to provide lasting benefits to children in this high risk group:

In a randomized cohort study, the intervention reduced those children’s tendency to attribute hostile intent to others, according to Vivien Keil, PhD, of the University of California Los Angeles.

The reduction was maintained for at least three months and may lead to improved developmental outcomes, Keil and colleagues reported in the February issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

“Children with (prenatal alcohol exposure) have a hard time making and keeping friends,” Keil said in a statement. “They tend to have difficulty understanding social cues and common social norms.”